Myth and novel : a presentation of theoretical stances

Streszcz. po ang.

The article presents a panorama of theoretical stances referring to the mutual relationships between a myth and a novel. The conceptions were divided into four classes. The first (made up of papers by Juri Lotman and Northrop Frye) concentrates of the genetic kinship and points out at the divergent influences that a myth gave on a novel (mostly at its birth). The second and the third group (represented by papers by John Vickery and John White) point at the presence of plots, quotations and mythical allusions or at some other (purely formal) loans in the novelistic narration. The fourth group of scholars (e.g. Mircea Eliade, Odo Marquard, Eric Gould) eliminates intertextual relations and replaces them with functional ones. The old purposes of myth were contemporarily taken over by literature and thus the novel - both in its form and its contents - is subject to mithologisation.